


Defibrillation

by Austennerdita2533



Category: The Good Doctor (TV 2017)
Genre: (Also re: I didn't sign up for this feels fest), (But here we are), 3x20 Fix-It, Angst with a Happy Ending, BECAUSE MELENDEZ LIVES, Did I mention Melendez lives?, F/M, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:20:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26312524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Austennerdita2533/pseuds/Austennerdita2533
Summary: When it comes to moments of life or death, Neil and Claire learn sometimes one defibrillation of the heart can reset everything.
Relationships: Claire Browne/Neil Melendez
Comments: 16
Kudos: 41





	Defibrillation

**Author's Note:**

> -For Tasneem 💝

The sirens start, red and blue lights cutting through the darkness with speed. Neil’s strapped to a gurney, conscious but barely, with tubes and leads sticking from him like he’s part machine while his eyes fixate on the gray-white swirl of the ceiling.

What’s happened? Where is he? Why the hell does he hurt so much? Right now the blunt ache over his left temple is a trifle compared to the scalpel-like shard that’s been stabbing through his abdomen every two to four seconds and has nausea roaring into the back of his throat with each bump, with each gloved touch that ghosts over his prone form in examination, his vision dotted and blurred and fading…

It’s fading quickly…

_…yes…_

_…f-fading…_

_…so…q u i c k…ly…_

Monitors beep in the background. Softly at first, then louder. Faster. Shorter. Quieter. Steadily the screens track his stats before diving into erratic nonsense that can’t be pieced together as his fists curl into the sheet beneath him, knuckles bumping against a metal railing.

Neil’s eyelids burn, they grow heavy. All he tastes is blood and bile. A mask hangs over his mouth so he can’t talk, can’t call out either, the oxygen cool as it filters through his nostrils, little hairs tickling. He winces once, takes another shallow breath in—and then nothing.

Blackness pops. Noiseless but everywhere. Like a falling curtain, it frays the edges of the world until he can no longer see anything.

Coldness slams like a hammer over his chest, pouring, rippling, spreading out with tendrils to invade cell after cell until before he knows it he’s drifting away from time and thoughts and oxygen that won’t hold steady…He’s sinking down, down, down into a rigid stillness that refuses to lift... 

But then—

A flurry of movement to his right. Behind his head. Next comes a lot of pronounced clunking, swearing, whispering; perhaps even some harried tearing or unzipping.

 _No, no, no. Stay with me_ , pleads a familiar voice from above him in echo. With his head spinning with delirium, however, he’s unable to place who is speaking.

_Come on, Neil. Don’t do this, not now. Hold on for me._

He feels distant, detached, like he’s been sunk under water but never went swimming.

 _Hold on for me_. _Please._

The words are wet and desperate as they land on his chest with two hands that push, and push, his eyes slitting open just wide enough for Claire’s face to float into focus for a moment then out again like a dream, the heel of her palm pounding into him with the force of a tether to keep him there with her, alive, stable - one breath, one blink, one heartbeat at a time.

The fleeting sight of her brings him back. Hair. Scrubs. Hands. Eyes. She brings him back into the pain and into the light. Her relief, that smile—he needs it; it’s a leash yanking him off the ledge of surrender and telling him to fight for another chance to live. To speak. After all, he’s a surgeon, so doesn’t he already know time is a borrowed gift with no guarantees?

 _Stay with me,_ Claire says again. And this time, he clings. He clings to her as hard as he can even as the world goes black a second time, his heart still full of too many unsaid things.

—

She waits for the door to click shut behind her in the stairwell.

Alone on the landing, there are no more voices. No more computers or phones. There are no more charts to read, labs to run, procedures to schedule, or medications to administer.

Wheelchairs stop squeaking through the hallways. Their wheels are no longer sticking to speckled white tiles as they turn the corner and head toward recovery. The smell of brewing coffee in the lounge near OR Four becomes a stale memory because here, and only here, do the demands of the hospital dissolve long enough for Claire to collapse her head into her palms for a moment, and breathe. Just breathe.

She only takes a moment. A second to grapple with the enormity of all that is happening.

Eyes closed, thoughts scattered, her fingers coil around something metal in her pocket and idle.

Her thumbnail traces sleek edges, silver grooves. A chain droops over her knuckles and scratches. Soothes. Familiarity tingling with each pass.

It’s a cross she fists in the quiet gloom. A token. Some beat-up trinket of her mother’s she couldn’t part with after her death so she’s taken to carrying it with her like a talisman even though she hasn’t believed in anything, or in anyone, for a long time. Not for years and years. Not until him, that is.

Neil.

 _He’ll be fine,_ Claire assures herself with a nod and a sniff. _He’ll be okay._

The scan results sit in a folder next to her feet, still in need of a consult, still in want of a surgical scheme. The words “stable but critical” float in her periphery then flicker out again like a nightmare that won’t fade.

 _He needs to be okay_ , she thinks. Cold bites into her palm as she squeezes then releases, squeezes then releases, her pinky tracing the divots the pendant leaves behind on her skin.

_He has to be._

Slowly, organically, Neil has chipped away at her walls to become a fixture in her life and she likes him there. Needs him there. She realizes she’ll do anything to keep him around, to keep him close to her for as long as she can.

So believer or not, Claire bows her head. She closes her eyes tighter and lets faith bleed from her heart straight into her hands.

Clutching her mother’s cross to her breast, begging for the strength and the skill to save him so they can have more time to bowl badly or laugh the night away over beers, so she can have the chance to say the words she already feels, she utters an urgent plea into the space around the stairs.

Claire wishes so hard for him to live that the words flutter as they take wing. They transform into symbols of her hope and despair:

A fossil in the air.

A sob with feathers.

A scream leeching from her compressed lips like a prayer.

—

Neil wakes with his head bandaged, his abdomen dissected with stitches, and a tuft of curly softness blanketed over his arm.

Squinting against the harsh hospital light, he sits up. Allows himself to adjust. To take in his surroundings.

Currently he lies flat in bed with a central line coiled up his arm. His head pounds, and his mouth is dry. Wrapped in scratchy sheets, in sticky gauze and bandages, he notices the curtains are pulled shut for privacy and that there’s a woman fast asleep in the space beside him.

The first thing he does is smile. The second thing he does is tremble, relief as well as gratitude pricking the corners of his eyes.

The sight of Claire snoring and pillowed against his side overwhelms him so much that he shifts to brush his hand over the crown of her head without thinking. His touch, both featherlight and timid because he’s worried she’s a mirage on the verge of disappearing, petrified that one wrong move will shatter the reality of this moment like glass, Neil cups her cheek in his palm and he marvels—he savors.

He loses himself in the pure simplicity of touch. The chaste pleasure of it. Tracing the curves of her face with his thumb until she wakes.

“Hey there, sleepy head,” he whispers as her eyelids flicker open.

“Hey, you."

"Nice to see you again."

"Welcome back,” she stirs groggily and yawns. “Can I get you anything? Pillows? Blankets? Meds? Here, let me—”

Claire makes to move, to fuss over him, but she stops when Neil shakes his head, holding her in place with a look, with a languid stroke of his fingers along her jawline. Relenting, she softens enough to desist fidgeting. Then leans into his palm to ask, “How are you feeling?”

“Fine.”

“Fine, my foot,” she balks, sitting up. “Don’t lie.”

“I am fine—all things considered. I do have the sneaking suspicion I was autopsied in my sleep for spare parts, though,” he jokes, wincing. “Otherwise I’m not bad. Fuzzy. Sore mostly. And you?”

“I’m okay, I guess. You know…considering.” Her shoulders heavy, Claire shrugs as she averts her gaze to check his fluids and vitals on the monitor, exhaling like she’s been holding in a breath for years. “Anyway, I’m much better now that you’re out of surgery.”

“—Not to mention conscious.”

“Right.”

“And talking again,” Neil adds glibly.

“Yeah,” she laughs but it falls flat. “That, too.”

“How long have I been out, by the way?” It’s a pointed question. Uncomfortable. Painful for them both to address because of all the _might have been’s_ and _almost was’s_ it carries with it, but he needs to know. He has to be in possession of all the facts.

Turning toward the window, Claire adjusts the blinds and swipes at her face, hiccupping back some stray emotion she doesn’t want him to see. “It’s been a while," she alludes. Doesn't elaborate.

“Oh.”

“Yeah," she says, her voice small. “Things were touch and go for a few days.”

“I see.” A beat of strained silence. Then another. And another. He’s starting to notice the weariness she wears about her person now: the paleness, her rimmed complexion, the wrinkles in her clothes. He even recognizes the remnants of a few to-go lattes in the trash bin. It makes him wonder how many hours she’s spent camped out in this room while he's recovered—weighing the odds, pouring over charts, pacing the floor while she waited for signs of life that weren’t guaranteed, or worse, might not have been coming at all.

“Hey, Claire?” he breaks in softly.

“Hm?”

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

Startled and sobering, she turns. Sits back down on the edge of the bed. “For what?” she asks.

“Nearly dying to start,” Neil says with a sigh. “For the cowardice I’ve been hiding behind. For not knowing one-sided conversations aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, or that living inside your own head lands you nowhere except in hell.

“I’ve been stupid and careless, you see… wasted so much time. I’m a fool for not having told you I’m in love with you sooner, for one," he continues huskily. "But I am. In love with you, that is." Shrugging, his voice breaks around emotion and a smile when she gapes back at him in disbelief. "Have been for a while."

Claire’s eyes are red and glassy now. Her head has fallen during his speech to make a pillow of his chest, a place from where she blinks even and level back at him. Studying him as if he were a scientific specimen.

Still, there’s a warmth about her that puts him at ease. Her attentiveness is a balm that makes him stronger and bolder even though he has no reason to be.

Resigned, Neil offers a slight upward quirk of his mouth before adding, “I could have lost you. Best to just—lay it all out there at this point, don’t you think?”

The sentimentality behind his choice of words is not lost upon him but he finds there’s no point in discretion now. There is nothing dumber to him than chasing back courage with fear when he knows how he’s ended up here, and why. There has to be a reason he’s come back to this world. To this hospital. To this moment. And to her.

_There has to be._

He believes there’s a future out there where they can hold happiness in both hands: he feels it like a scalpel pressed against an artery. All they have to do is be brave enough to make a grab for it. Mark the incision. Cut the damn thing wide open and let possibility bleed where it bleeds.

“If you don’t realize I love you, too,” Claire sniffs at long last, trying to sound droll and unaffected though not quite managing it with tears spilling down her cheeks, “then you’re an idiot.”

“An idiot, huh?”

“The biggest.”

“Right. Got it." He considers this seriously for a moment. "Now, can you rate that on a scale of 1 to 10 for me, please?”

Snorting, wiping at her eyes, she fires back without missing a beat, “Sure. Try infinity.”

Neil laughs at that. Then, with undisguised tenderness, he frames Claire’s head in his hands and pulls her toward him by the nape until she’s tangled in sheets and IV wires with him. To hell with the pain.

“Well then. Let’s see if I can do something to lower that number, Dr. Browne,” he says before capturing her mouth in an overdue kiss to cinch things between them with chemistry, with feeling. Jumpstarting their hearts like a defibrillator that will reset everything.

That one kiss, as it turns out, marks the first step towards being able to forge a future together. A start. To them, it comes to represent just that: a new beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> I've had a draft of this sitting on my computer since March because I aM ThE WoRsT. Thought it was half-past time to finish the damn thing already and purge. So voilá!
> 
> (I hope it wasn't too terrible.) 
> 
> Comments are lovely and thank you so much for reading! 
> 
> xx Ashlee Bree


End file.
